


Sabbatical

by rageprufrock



Series: Summer House [3]
Category: Eureka, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 03:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've been watching a lot of CSI," John says, eyes crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sabbatical

After Kim dies and Eureka gets rewound four years, Jack's understandably depressed and spends a lot of time sitting around the house in his boxers while SARAH and Zoe have concerned, whispered conversations about him in other rooms.   
  
In a sign that despite teen rebellion she really does love him, Zoe sits down next to him at the beginning of the World Series, looking grim. Before Jack can say something like, "Wow -- you really want to watch the series with me?" or "I never really meant all those jokes about the basinettes being switched at the hospital," Zoe holds up a quelling hand and says, "I am here to support you in your time of middle-aged distress -- but I do not want to talk about it."   
  
Jack thinks: fair enough, and lets her have a beer to dull the pain.  
  


*****

  
  
And for weeks and weeks after Kim's death, it's like the town is in mourning itself, and very little happens as the moment of silence stretches out across the span of months. Henry spends a lot of time locked into his garage and everybody's careful not to have any car accidents lest they disturb him. Even Fargo has left his speed dial four -- Jack's office number -- untouched.  
  
So it's fair to say that Jack's a little bit surprised to find John Sheppard in the frozen foods aisle of the grocery store one totally unremarkable Sunday night, pricing two brands of lima beans.  
  
"John?" Jack asks, hoping he sounds less stupid than he feels.  
  
"Hey, Jack," John says, looking up from his grocery cart -- near overflowing.  
  
Jack raises his eyebrows at the conspicuous lack of the McKay beer staple and says, "I'm surprised -- usually you spend some time flashing a sexy car and making every guy in town jealous before you bother to stock the pantry."  
  
Grinning, John drops one of the bags of limas into his cart, saying, "We just got in earlier today, and we came in kind of under the radar this time -- Rodney's not working so I'm guessing your standard Fargo detector didn't alert you to our presence."  
  
"McKay's seriously going to make him piss himself one day," Jack warns.  
  
"That's probably on purpose," John admits, and says, "Hey, look, we're trying to keep a low profile this time around -- but I'd like it if you came over to catch the rest of the series with me."  
  
Jack smiles and doesn't ask any questions. He figures he'll figure it out later. "My daughter thanks you."  
  
"Yeah, and McKay thanks you," John snorts. "You'd think that a man that obsessed with science would see the mathematical beauty of baseball."  
  
"Philistine," Jack agrees, and go their seperate ways.  
  


*

  
  
When Jack shows up the next day, John tells him to let himself in, and Jack wanders into the kitchen to find Sheppard fighting a losing war with a crockpot.   
  
He slides onto one of the kitchen stools, catching John's eye 'hello.' "Dare I ask?"  
  
"When I was a kid, every time I got sick my mom made the most amazing soups," John says stubbornly, jabbing a wooden spoon violently into the body of the crockpot. "I have a master's degree -- this should be easy."  
  
"I said that about parenthood," Jack offers in solidarity.  
  
"Parenthood and soup are totally different," John argues.  
  
"Oh my  _God_ ," interrupts the unmistakeable sound of Dr. McKay, "I really thought the time I caught you two discussing whether Back to the Future I or III was the best was scraping the bottom of the barrel but I see I was too hasty in my judgement."  
  
Jack rolls his eyes and says, "Hey, Doc. Long time no see."  
  
"Yes, well, if the Colonel had any sense of propriety or sensitivity, it would have been even longer," McKay mutters, and Jack sees why when Rodney wanders into his field of vision, walking delicately into the room, his left arm in a sling and close to his body, his face still dotted with cuts and bruises. He scowls at Jack's expression. "Nice fish impression, Sherrif Carter."  
  
"You're supposed to be in bed," John says, frowning and helping Rodney onto a stool carefully. "Did you cheek that Vicodin I gave you?"  
  
"Yes, because I'm such a fan of suffering," Rodney snaps, and leans heavily against the counter, peering worriedly into John's crockpot. "What in God's name are you doing?"  
  
"I'm  _nursing you,_ " John says sarcastically. "Now are you gonna go back to bed or are you just going to bitch all the way through the game?"  
  
Rodney ends up spending the rest of the evening more or less collapsed against John's shoulder on the couch, and during the second inning, John spreads an afghan across Rodney's lap and absently pets the back of his hand as Rodney slips into sleep, tension rolling out of his body.  
  
"What happened?" Jack murmurs during a commercial. He can't help but look: at the butterfly bandages on the curve of McKay's cheek, the shadows of bruises on his chin and the green and purple bruise around his eyes. His wrist is in a cast and the way he's nearly curled into himself tells Jack that underneath the USAF sweatshirt Rodney's wearing, there are more of the same. He's been beat to hell and wrung out, and McKay looks small and tired and humbled and Jack doesn't like it at all.  
  
John sighs and rubs his free hand over his face. "I fucked up," he says, and doesn't elaborate.  
  


*

  
  
Apparently "low profile" means "ghost," and if Jack wasn't spending a lot of evenings at the lake house helping John to master the art of making chicken noodle soup -- "You realize there's no reason you have to make the noodles from scratch," Jack keeps arguing -- he would swear John and Rodney were still off wherever they were usually off.  
  
Zoe spends a lot of time petitioning to go over, too, having moved from nursing a feverish passion for Sheppard to a simmering, hopeless crush of the more manageable kind. When Jack explains to her why not, she doesn't seem to get it, and continues not to get it until the day John asks if Jack will hang out and McKay-sit, he's got an appointment he can't break, despite the amount of yelling John intimates he tried.  
  
"He knows what pills to take when," John says, not making eye contact, "so it's just a matter of making sure he's awake to take them -- I'd just rather not have him waking up in crippling pain."  
  
"Understood," Jack says, trying to casual despite John's grim expression.  
  
"And he'll probably be verbally abusive," John adds lightly. "He doesn't know I asked you to stay with him." He looks at where Zoe is staring in mute horror at the small fortress of orange presciption pills: painkillers and muscle relaxants, anti-anxiety pills and anti-virals, antibiotics -- Jack can't even imagine what's happened. "You probably shouldn't take anything Rodney says to you to heart, just for the record."  
  
"Duly noted," Zoe answers, snapping to attention.  
  
It's a sign of how bad it is that she's not even glazing over at the dress blues. John gives them both an uncomfortable smile and says, "Thanks, I'll be back in two days," in the same uncomfortable way, and Jack and Zoe stand on the porch and wave goodbye as John drives away in a dark green SUV, tail lights fading in the distance.  
  


*

  
  
McKay's uncharacteristically meek when Jack does his first wake-up at eight that night, saying softly, "Hey, McKay, wake up, pill time." He looks bleary and disoriented for just a second until his eyes focus on Jack's face and he sighs, reaching out for a segmented pill case on the nightstand.  
  
"I should have known he would get me babysitters," Rodney says, neither bitter nor surprised.  
  
"I'm here mostly as an alarm clock," Jack tries.  
  
Rodney snorts, but winces, and takes the glass of water Jack offers. "Thanks, but he's had me on all-but-24-hour monitoring since they found me -- I kind of anticipated an international inquest wouldn't change that."   
  
For a guy with such a big mouth, McKay makes swallowing look surprisingly painful, and Jack finds himself easing McKay back against his pillows -- and Rodney went without a sound, brow furrowed in discomfort, breathing shallowly, asleep again almost instantly.  
  
The next morning, Jack's called into town when a small -- "Relatively small," one of the Baker twins says, "Really, the crater is nowhere near as bad as Ms. Blake is making it sound." -- nuclear test goes haywire, so calls home and Zoe comes over, looking wide-eyed and almost a little scared.  
  
"What do I do when he wakes up?" she hisses in gray morning light.  
  
"You give him a glass of water," Jack explains. "And if he needs help, help him downstairs. Help him fix breakfast." Zoe' s expression is very clear in what she thinks McKay's reaction to her helpfulness will be. "Or you could just let him yell at you -- you're really good at glazing over in exactly the most infuriating way."  
  
Zoe looks thoughtful. "That is true," she admits.  
  


*

  
  
Jack thinks that putting up a brave face despite his urge to go totally crackers every time he sees Allison and crawling through three miles of tunnel has earned him a shower, so when he finally gets back to the lake house it's evening, red and oranges melting across the water. He follows the faint sound of voices around the side of the porch and finds Zoe and McKay sitting at a wicker table with a small mountain of brown packaging in front of them.  
  
"Wait, and you  _like_  this stuff?" Zoe says in horror.  
  
McKay sniffs. "The MREs have been designed with a balance of nutrition and ease of travel in mind."  
  
"Okay, ease my ass, it just took us like twenty minutes just to get this one heating," Zoe scoffed.  
  
" _I_  have a broken wrist, two jammed fingers, and four broken ribs and  _you_  are incapable of following written instructions!" Rodney snapped back, spots of red appearing on his cheeks. "The Colonel can put one of these together in a snap."  
  
Zoe wrinkled her nose at him. "No, seriously -- is that a sex thing? Because it's really weird you never call him John."  
  
Rodney makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like he's choking.  
  
Jack decides he can either call time-out on the conversation and have The Talk with his daughter since if she's using the word sex, she probably knows how to have it and that  _causes him physical pain_ , or he can retreat into the kitchen and eavesdrop while drinking coffee and reading the paper. Cowardice wins, and he tiptoes off.   
  
From the kitchen counter, he can see the sides of their faces through the French doors, how Zoe is nearly doubled over in laughter, and how when making a revolted expresion, McKay almost looks healthy.  
  
"Oh my God, this is  _so gross_ ," Zoe laughs helplessly, words floating in through the opened window over the sink. "I can't even tell what  _food this is supposed to be._ "  
  
There's a shuffle and McKay admits, "Okay, so not all the MREs are very gourmet. But they're not terrible."  
  
"You just don't want to eat whatever it was John left you in the fridge," Zoe says triumphantly.  
  
"Do  _you_  want to eat what we found in the fridge?" McKay challenges. "I've never seen a food that looked... _amphibious._ "  
  
There's a long pause before McKay adds, "Although we should probably stuff it down the garbage disposal before he gets home." An embarrassed beat. "So he knows how much I hate it, of course."  
  
"Wuss," Zoe says affectionately. "Don't worry, I won't tell anybody you can be secretly sweet."  
  
"That is a filthy lie," McKay argues. "And if you keep this up, there's no way I'm helping you do your math homework."  
  
Jack smiles into his coffee mug.  
  


*

  
  
When John finally drags back in to Eureka, it's just a few minutes shy of making his trip three days instead of two. He lets himself into the house and thanks Jack for hanging around and Zoe for distracting McKay and they both try not to stare too hard at the dark circles under his eyes or how pale he looks, almost as beat-up as McKay when he just got into town.   
  
"It's not a problem," Jack says smoothly, putting an arm around Zoe's shoulders and squeezing.  
  
"We were happy to help," Zoe says gently, and that surprises even Jack. "Oh, and Rodney totally loved the stew you left him."  
  
John looks at her uncertainly. "It was a casserole."  
  
"Was it?" Zoe asks, high-pitched. "I only heard about it. He'd eaten all of it before I got a chance."  
  
"Oh," John says, slightly mollified.   
  
Rodney must hear John from upstairs because there're tell-tale thumps coming down the stairs, that pause halfway down, and McKay's voice, softer than Jack has heard it before, says, "John?"   
  
John turns to glance at the stairs, and Jack and Zoe take the opportunity to let themselves out, and as the door to the house is closing, Jack hears Rodney murmur, "Oh, geez -- you look like hell," and John laughing, the rustle of cloth, and John saying, "Well,  _you_  look much better."  
  


*

  
  
Zoe starts making afternoon pilgrammages to the lake house, and comes back looking torn between fury and elation, and Jack wonders if McKay's school of hard love is having a negative effect when he finds Zoe trying to convince SARAH to let her use the house to complete a circuit to model one of her problem sets for class.  
  
"It is not that do not trust you, Zoe," SARAH tells her firmly. "But as much as your intentions may be good, you do not have any idea what you are doing."  
  
"But how will I learn if you don't  _help me?_ " Zoe asks pitifully.  
  
"Carry out your experiments at Dr. McKay's residence, if he is so eager for you to learn by trial," SARAH says, snippy, and refocuses in on Jack's presence by saying, "Jack -- would you like beer for your cereal or milk today?"  
  


*

  
  
Autumn melts into winter and by the time the first snowfall blankets the town, the McKays' low profile has grown into one of B-rated fame. The sling is gone and McKay is walking easier, and the worst of the cuts and bruises has healed, even if the pale blue cast -- with an X-wing fighter sketched onto it -- is still present.   
  
Having failed to survive a marriage (and barely surviving the negation of the second), Jack knows that love can in no way concquer all, so he's not surprised when John shows up on evening, looking like he's working on his last thread of sanity, and says, "I'm even willing to watch curling -- just let me in your house so I don't have to be in mine."  
  
"I have satellite," Jack soothes, ushering him into the living room where Zoe is doing something that looks suspiciously like copying formulas into her TI-89+ instead of learning trigonometry the honest way. "We can watch Japanese baseball."  
  
John doesn't say anything, just gives Jack an expression of intense gratitude.  
  
"I'm just saying," John admits two beers and two hours later, a TNT rerun of  _Bring It On_  playing in the background with Zoe repeating all the dialogue along with the TV. "I'm telling you in advance I'm starting to get some really violent thoughts and you should be prepared to get a call about a 4-19 at the house."  
  
Jack quirks one eyebrow. "Four-nineteen?"  
  
"I've been watching a lot of CSI," John says, eyes crazy. "A lot. It's either that or kill him in his sleep."  
  
"I understand," Jack says, giving him another beer.  
  
"He sleeps  _a lot_ ," John emphasizes. "There have been plenty of opportunities."  
  
"You should cut him a little slack," Zoe calls up from her sprawl on the carpet, a half-empty tube of Pringles balanced on her stomach as she makes duck bills with two chips at a time. "He's been eating your stew-sseroles, hasn't he?"  
  
Jack bites his lip and John looks pained. "I thought I was getting better," he says feebly.  
  
"No," Jack and Zoe confirm simultaneously.  
  
"Oh," John says, and even his hair looks demoralized.  
  
Later that night, they get a call. McKay whispers, frantic and close to the receiver, "I mean, okay, obviously, he's still upset about being a criminally shitty cook and he'll probably be pouting forever but there're take-out menus on the fridge now and his anger is  _totally_  directed at you guys. Thank you -- so, so much."  
  


*

  
  
Jack realizes he's been lulled into a false sense of security as far as the McKays go when he gets a 911 from the house a week before Christmas.  
  
A woman's voice says into the receiver, "I was informed that this number sequence alerts a security team -- we require the assistance of locksmiths and a mediator immediately at the home of Rodney McKay and John Sheppard, it is urgent," before she hangs up.   
  
Jo, who is listening on the same extension purses her lips and says, "You go. They like you."  
  
"Traitor," Jack says bitterly and calls Henry as he's walking out of the sheriff's office.  
  
Jack and Henry pull up into the wide, dirt driveway of the house at the same time and exchange a wary nod when they see that flanking John's green SUV, there're three black ones, midnight and sleek and nearly light-absorbing in their comprehensively dark auras, parked like land mines in front of the house.  
  
"She said specifically a locksmith?" Henry asks, curious.  
  
Curious is better than wretched, Jack supposes, which might be an upside to all of this.  
  
"She said locksmith and mediator -- immediately," Jack answers grimly.  
  
And as if on cue, the front door bursts open and a woman in a long leather peasant skirt and clinging purple tunic comes out, hair looking slightly wild and face flushed. "Are you the security team?" she demands, and Jack barely finishes nodding before she says, "Good, you are finally here. Please, hurry -- I do not know how much longer John can continue to jam Rodney's cell phone signal."  
  
"You said she said  _locksmith!_ ," Henry hisses accusingly.  
  
"Don't shoot the messenger, buddy!" Jack snaps, and they run up the front steps and the hall steps, until they come to the closed door of the master bedroom, where John is sitting on the ground typing frantically on a silvery laptop, shouting all the while:  
  
"Rodney, threatening the Joint Chiefs is not the answer!"  
  
"I never should have taught you to use your God damned computer!" comes the answering cry from inside. "You might be able to be casual about your career but I can't!"  
  
"It's only a  _little_  court martial," John yells back, and seeing Jack and Henry standing in the upstairs hall, he says, "Oh, thank God -- can somebody please get this door open before Rodney starts screaming bloody hell at every branch of the armed forces?"  
  
The dramatics continue -- "Rodney, I swear to God!" and "It wasn't your fault! You shouldn't get blamed!" -- while Henry starts working at the door, an activity that only seems to bore him for a second before he says, "Okay, so I'm starting to see why a strapping young man like yourself didn't just kick this down."  
  
"God damn magnets," John says bitterly, eyes starting to cross. "McKay! Come on! You're just going to make this worse!"  
  
Meanwhile, feeling extremely useless, Jack settles in, leaning against the wall next to the woman from before, her expression increasingly anxious. "So," he says awkwardly. "Were you the one who put in the call?"  
  
She turns and smiles at him tightly. "Yes. Thank you for coming so quickly."  
  
"Jack Carter, sheriff," Jack introduces himself.   
  
"Teyla Emmagen. I am a friend of John and Rodney's," she answers tiredly.   
  
"I've never seen you around Eureka before." He would have remembered. Without the hazy worry of John actually carrying out the 4-19, Jack realizes she's really extremely hot.  
  
"No, I am not from here," Teyla explains. "My people -- the Athosians -- live on the Atlantean homeworld, where Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay are normally stationed. I am here for the winter solstice -- "  
  
Before Jack can freak out about things like "my people" and "homeworld" and "stationed" he hears a high-pitched shriek from inside the room, McKay shouting, "Back! Back, you Yeti!" just as Henry finally jimmy's open the door. And when they all burst in, it's to see an admittedly Yeti-like man holding McKay's cell phone -- an incredibly complicated number that looks nothing like any cell phone Jack has ever seen -- about three feet over his head, and Rodney shoving uselessly at him.   
  
"Give it back!" Rodney snarls. "You just wait until I get back to a place where I can program your life into a living hell!"   
  
The man just bares his teeth at him. "I can take anything you can dish out."  
  
"Okay," John says, rushing up to step between Rodney and the man-mountain, "nobody's making anybody take anything."  
  
"You and me, Ronon," Rodney growls, glaring. "You and me -- I'm about to  _throw it down._ "  
  
"Try me," Ronon growls back, grinning.  
  
"Ronon, unless you want to get shocked every time you try to take a piss, I suggest you quit now while you're ahead," John snaps. "And Rodney, the man just climbed up the side of a three-story house with his bare hands and punched out a window -- you're not taking him down. Jesus." He turns around and winces, saying to Jack, "Sorry about this -- but could you and Henry go down to the basement? There're a couple of high-level government employees Rodney locked in with the rats."  
  


*

  
  
While Henry struggles with an even more powerful set of magnetic locks on the basement door, Jack and Teyla talk at the kitchen table. Ronon is eating his way steadily through the refrigerator. And upstairs, the sound of a low-pitched, furious argument can still be heard.  
  
"It is a complicated story," Teyla says, shaking her head and sighing. "But suffice it to say that our missions meet frequently with unexpected dangers, and while Colonel Sheppard is a very good and conscientious leader, he cannot predict every possibility."  
  
"She means McKay wandered off," Ronon supplies before shoving a handful of Cheese Nips in his mouth.  
  
"Wait -- wait -- he got that banged up from getting  _lost?_ " Jack says skeptically.  
  
Teyla winces. "No. What Ronon means is that Dr. McKay was pursuing some unique energy signatures on a world we were visiting and unknowingly was separated from his military escort." Her mouth hardens. "His captors were not kind. He was in the infirmary for many weeks before he was well enough to take his requested sabbatical."  
  
Jack winces. He remembers in a sudden flash what McKay looked like that first time and wonders how bad it must have been before the many weeks in the infirmary, and thinks he doesn't  _want_  to know what McKay and Sheppard do -- if this is what it does to them.  
  
"But you negotiated for his release?" Jack asks uncomfortably.  
  
"Not exactly," Teyla prevaricates.  
  
Abandoning the Cheese Nips, Ronon goes for the Frosted Mini-Wheats, and between handfuls, he says conversationally, "Sheppard blew up some continents." At Jack's blankly horrified expression, he adds, "They were probably uninhabited."  
  
It's right about then that the rest of the interested parties pour into the room, a flustered and angry-looking crowd of men in dark suits and Air Force dress uniforms, shoulders slumping under their stars and medals. They all look ferociously angry and incredibly embarrassed, and Ronon smirks at them from his spot deep inside the pantry.  
  
"Where's Colonel Sheppard?" one of them -- bald and with round glasses, tie askew -- bites out, fists shaking.  
  
"He is upstairs," Teyla says soothingly, rising in one smooth, unbreaking line from her seat. "I will retrieve him for you." She pauses in front of them, and in that same hypnotically calm voice, says, "I hope you do not hold Dr. McKay's actions against him -- Dr. Beckett said that some of the medications might make him behave in a way that is...out of character."  
  
Henry, dropping down into the empty seat alongside Jack as the dark, angry crowd moves out of the room, says, "Wow -- I really thought everybody was exaggerating about these two."  
  
"No," Jack says evenly.   
  
"You should have seen fit Sheppard pitched when we found out they were torturing McKay for intel," Ronon mumbles, investigating a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli. "It makes this look like amateur hour."  
  
Henry raises his eyebrows.  
  
"He blew up some continents," Jack offers. "But Ronon says they were probably uninhabited."  
  
"I see," Henry says strangely and offers to show Ronon the can opener.  
  


*

  
  
Zoe grills Jack when he gets home and then proceeds to go on a half hour tear about the gross discrimination inherent in Don't Ask Don't Tell ("Don't Harass, Don't Pursue, too, Dad, geez. Don't you know anything?") before Jack coughs and says, "Actually, I think they're mad about something else."  
  
She stops short in the middle of a prepositional phrase, does a mental U-turn, and asks, "Like what?"  
  
"Like, John blew up some continents," Jack says, and adds reassuringly, "On another planet."  
  
Zoe makes a conflicted expression. "Well," she says after a beat. "I'm sure he had a good reason."  
  
Jack points at her. "This town is turning us into  _freaks,_  Zoe.  _Total freaks_."  
  


*

  
  
Jack's pretty sure that his perspective from the outside spares him a lot of anguish and drama, but the next time he sees the McKay clan, it seems the worst of it has blown over. John and McKay and Ronon and Teyla are standing in the only tree lot in Eureka -- hydroponic Douglas Firs -- and snapping at one another over which one to take home.   
  
McKay says, "Beauty is symmetry! Clearly, the first one we saw was the most mathematically symmetrical of this lot -- and somebody else who is not a  _blind freak_  is going to take it before we can if you keep this up!"  
  
John argues, "But beauty isn't  _character_. That tree was boring. This one -- " he's indicating one that Jack can only describe as 'slightly lame' " -- has character."  
  
"It is listing to the right," Teyla says oddly. "Will that not hinder the process of hanging glass balls off of it?"  
  
"I don't get it. There're trees around your house," Ronon complains.  
  
McKay puts his face in his hands. "This was the worst idea ever," he says, muffled through his gloves and scarf and enormous coat. "Let's bring the aliens home for the holidays, Rodney. They'll like it. We can hang lights, Rodney, it'll be cool. It'll be a nice break for you, Rodney, just go with it. Do it or I'm cutting you off for a year -- "  
  
"Be nice to me," John pouts. "I was close to getting busted back down to a Major."  
  
"Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and science team pools," Rodney snaps, and then his expression softens, the same way it must have when he was jamming John's stew-sseroles down the garbage disposal in paranoid caring. "But you didn't. And that's the important thing. Because the gold oak leaf was lame."  
  
"I believe we should acquire this one," Teyla calls out. She's standing next to a manicured bush, shaped to be a perfect sphere and staring at it in curious wonder.   
  
Jack shakes his head, but figures that he should take his opportunities where they come, and he sneaks into the tree lot and sneaks off with McKay's perfectly symmetrical tree before the quartet stops squabbling about whether or not a bush can be used as a Christmas tree -- "It is a tree!" Teyla says defensively, enamored. "Just a small,  _round_  tree." -- and notices that Jack's tying it to the roof of his SUV.   
  
He'll probably get hell for it later, but right now, Jack is thinking about going home and harassing Zoe into helping him make strings of popcorn and ornaments out of folded newspaper stars, cranes made out of Sports Illustrated pages. His ex got the house and the stuff and all of the memories, but Jack is invested in making new ones.   
  
And later that night, Zoe is hiding her sniffles badly at their 98237439847th watching of  _It's a Wonderful Life_  and her insistence that the next thing on their holiday movie queue should be something less sappy, like  _Bring it On_. Jack thinks that he doesn't miss his house or his stuff or any of the memories he had to give up and put away, or even the ones that never really existed -- of Allison and a white mailbox, a baby that never happened -- because despite everything else, he has this. He has Zoe, he has his perfectly symmetrical Christmas tree, and somewhere in Eureka, John is putting up one that lists to the left while McKay sputters in fury and Ronon eats them out of house and home and everything is utterly perfect.  
  


*

  
  
They leave, quietly, as spring is creeping back into the town, taking off in their green SUV with a few suitcases and a hug and a careful squeeze from Zoe to McKay, who suffers it with a sort of battered grace. The McKay that leaves is bouncing on the balls of his feet, cast-free and snapping at everybody, the opposite of quiet, a whirlwind of complaining and bitching and theatrics that makes Jack tired just watching him -- but John seems to drink it all in with an indulgent sort of happiness, weary but glad.  
  
"Sorry to have left without saying a word," John apologizes. His voice is staticky. "But I'm on kind of a short leash at work and when they say jump, I say how high, sir."  
  
"Not a problem. Next time," Jack tells him, "come to town under better circumstances."  
  
John laughs over the phone, and in the background Jack can hear Rodney saying, "No! No! You utter  _fools!_  What the hell makes you think that something 40-feet wide was going to fit through something with a diameter of 20? I knew a blonde 16-year-old who was better at  _basic arithmetic_  than that!"  
  
"I'm pretty sure we won't be dealing with any repeat offenders," John says, too casually, and Jack makes a decision not to think about what John's like when he's not losing fights with crockery and letting McKay make him invisible helicopters. "Look, we're about to head out. Say hi to Zoe for me. And McKay sends his best."  
  
"I'm sure he does," Jack says, and they hang up.  
  
To be totally honest, Jack's not really sure he'd like Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard -- but he likes John just fine, and that's compartmentalization he can handle. So Jack gets SARAH to fix him an open-faced turkey sandwich and pull up the Michigan game, settles in on his couch, and waits for Zoe to get home. It's Friday, and TNT is probably running  _Bring it On_  -- again.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * ['Summer House' Trilogy [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3890146) by [podfic_lover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/podfic_lover/pseuds/podfic_lover)




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